NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 28 number 1 - Fall 2007

Constance Steinkuehler & Virtual Worlds: The 2007 I. T. Littleton Seminar

By Josh Wiilson, NCSU Librarians Association

When Constance Steinkuehler opened the 2007 I. T. Littleton Seminar by joking that she had just enjoyed a lunchtime session playing Nintendo Wii with former library director I. T. Littleton, she gave her audience a taste of both her engaging speaking style and an important facet of gaming culture. The point she made was that gaming is a "leveler" in which participants' unique role in the online group is what is valued, rather than their positions in the outside world--and anyone can enjoy playing along.

As the featured speaker at the May 1 seminar, Steinkuehler emphasized the diversity and inclusiveness of the gaming community and highlighted the educational dimension of an activity generally viewed as "entertainment." Her lecture at the D. H. Hill Library, "Digital Media Literacy and Learning in Virtual Worlds," specifically addressed the special forms of literacy necessary for participation in "massively multiplayer online games (MMOs)," also known as virtual worlds.

After introducing MMOs such as Lineage and EverQuest to a large audience of students, faculty, and library staff, Steinkuehler stunned those unfamiliar with the phenomenon by quoting figures on participation and economics. The largest MMO, World of Warcraft, boasts 8.5 million paying subscribers worldwide. She also reported that the value of real-world economic trade of virtual artifacts in Norrath, a fictional planet within EverQuest, would make it the seventy-seventh largest economy in the world. Steinkuehler concluded that participation in these virtual worlds has become "intellectually significant," necessitating study.

According to Steinkuehler, the tremendous interest in MMOs verifies the reality of "pop cosmopolitanism," the concept that trends in popular culture can steer learning and behavior. Steinkuehler cited five major forms of behavior illustrating this point, of which she discussed two in detail. First, collaborative problem solving occurs naturally in MMOs, in much the same way that groups of children or adults tackle work in teams. Second, new digital literacy practices have emerged in MMOs that bear the hallmarks of any sophisticated language, despite the pervading "literacy scare" that falsely blames video games for declining language skills.

Steinkuehler's research has garnered the attention of NC State faculty from the College of Education and the Department of Computer Science who are interested in instructional technology. Representatives of both units attended the seminar, including members of NC State's Liquid Narrative Group and Digital Games Research Center.

Relating her research to the concept of "third places," that is, informal social spaces beyond the workplace and home, Steinkuehler argued that virtual worlds are prime examples of these. Third places should be neutral ground without serious consequences, where the mood is playful and the population consists of both visitors and regulars. Her comments evoked the Libraries' recently inaugurated Learning Commons, where students move seamlessly between conducting research, meeting friends, practicing class presentations, and playing both traditional and online games.

Steinkuehler is an assistant professor in the curriculum and instruction department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her doctoral dissertation was a two-year online cognitive ethnography of the game Lineage, focusing specifically on the forms of cognition, learning, and literacy required to play the game. She teaches "Research in Online Virtual Worlds," "Analyzing Online Social Interaction," "Gender and Technology," and "Critical Instructional Practices on the Internet" and also runs the annual Games, Learning, and Society Conference in Madison.

Her lecture marked the twentieth anniversary of the I. T. Littleton Seminar, a series funded by an endowment established in 1987 to honor Littleton upon his retirement from NC State as library director.